Q&A: City Attorney Jan Goldsmith on his busy agenda

A: Certainly the state of California is the biggest risk we have in, with [its claim on local funds for] redevelopment, I think we are at risk of losing a lot of money. And we’ve said publicly we probably will. We were successful in the first two [state attempts to defund city redevelopment projects] that we’ve challenged. But I’m not sure how far we go beyond that.

Q: The city of Santa Ana told the state government it won’t give the state any of the $56 million in redevelopment funds it has. Can you foresee the city taking such a confrontational role over its redevelopment funds?

A: It’s certainly possible. Those decisions are made in closed session. That’d be the council’s decision. I’m not going to foreclose anything because we’re talking about a lot of money. But I think we have at this point a very good strategy in trying to get what we’re supposed to get. If we just threw everything out there, we would be in a lawsuit for years and we wouldn’t get the stuff that we think we should get clearly. So we’re trying to do it in pieces.

Q: The implementation of Proposition B, the benefits reform measure approved by city voters in 2012, is being challenged by the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) on the grounds it violated collective bargaining rights of city workers. Are there settlement negotiations going or do you just go to trial or go to court ruling?

A: Our office is not engaged in formal settlement negotiations. We’re waiting on the determination of the administrative law judge. This is a fellow who works for PERB. And the issue is whether PERB was right. The council has already authorized us that we’re to test this in the appellate courts, and we tried to do it before this; we went through the administrative hearing because the writing was on the wall. The appellate court sent us back to the administrative proceeding and said, no, we’re going to make you go through those hoops. Eventually it’s going to be determined by the courts. We’d love to see PERB basically go away. We can implement Proposition B through our local process, negotiating process. We’ve done part of it. The rest of it can be negotiated during this negotiating season. We have a 401(k) already now in place for new employees.

Q: On homeless issues, when the new permanent shelter opens this month, the city would again be authorized to enforce the ordinance on no sleeping on sidewalks?

A: When I took office there was a complete injunction against enforcing our vagrancy laws between the hours of 9 p.m. and I think it was 6 a.m., something along those lines. The change that we negotiated is that we can enforce our vagrancy laws anytime if someone is offered a bed and refuses it. It’s geared toward the folks who are unwilling to accept help. I learned [the need for] that on the bench. In misdemeanor arraignment, you get a lot of homeless people with stacks of tickets. And I liked to bring them into my courtroom and try to work with them. And every one of them are a completely different story and they need individual attention. The bottom line is the ones that I saw needed mental health or alcohol or drug counseling. A bed without any of that doesn’t really help. And a lot of them don’t even want it. So you can get them help, but they’ve got to want to help themselves or be cajoled into doing it. That’s what the change was designed to do. And the ACLU lawyers agreed that the idea here is you either accept our help or you’re going to go to jail. And they were the activists, the advocates for the homeless, and they went along with that idea.